Pictures or Plain Text
Eudora Tip #170/12-Mar-2003

In a couple of earlier Tips I’ve written about the problems of sending HTML mail and also about problems with sending pictures. If you understand all the issues and you still decide to send a picture as part of an E-mail message then there’s another thing that you need to be aware of.

Go to Settings… under the Special menu and look at the section called Styled Text. Have a look at the part called Sending mail with styles. You have three radio buttons and a check box. If you check the Radio button for Send plain text mail only, and if you also do *not* check Ask each time, then when you try to send your message with the picture in it, the picture will be removed on its way through. Your recipient will receive a message which does not contain a picture.

It’s a sensible idea to check the box called Ask each time. Then when you try to send the message Eudora will put up an alert box asking you to decide whether or not to go ahead with including this styled text (ie your picture).

You can choose to send Plain only, Styled only, or Both. A plain message will strip out the picture. A styled message will include HTML formatting. If you choose both then your message will be sent with one part as plain text and another part which is HTML.

I have my settings like this: Send plain text mail only, Ask each time. This helps ensure that I send plain text mail unless I deliberately choose to send something else.